Terminal Zones by Gareth E. Rees

Author:Gareth E. Rees
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Influx Press Ltd
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

2. THE STOLEN CAR

It was a friend of their old maths teacher who asked them to steal his car. Up to his eyeballs in debt, he was desperate for a speedy operation on his haemorrhoids. An insurance payout on the theft and destruction of his vintage BMW 2000 would allow him to go private. He reasoned that his teacher friend would know some hooligan who’d nick it for cash, which is how Tyler and Natasha came to be recruited as car thieves.

Tyler had left his wayward teenage ways behind him but couldn’t turn down the money. A grand in cash would help them rent a flat in Bexhill. Get them out of their rut and on the way somewhere. The only risky bit was stealing the car from the old codger’s house without being noticed. Once they drove onto the Levels, it would be a cinch. There was nobody out there late at night, and by the time anybody spotted the flames, he and Tash would be legging it across the fields, concealed by darkness.

On the train to Eastbourne they kept a low profile, talking quietly. On the way to the house where the BMW was parked they shared a single-skin reefer. Nothing heavy. A mild skunk. They had a car key so they didn’t need to smash glass or hot wire the vehicle, though they had instructions to do that when they reached the Levels, to make it look legit.

Natasha was the driver. Tyler’s job was to set the thing alight. Trash it good and proper. Besides, Tash was one of those butter-wouldn’t-melt types who wouldn’t look too suspicious at the wheel of a posh car. She’d even put on one of her mum’s fur coats and a ton of makeup to get the right look.

A well crafty move.

The plan was all sorted, they thought, driving out of Eastbourne, through Pevensey, onto the A259, then off the road near Middle Barn Farm. Natasha had already checked it out on Google Maps. There was a convenient dirt track that would take them into a field with some raised ground. They could burn the car on one side and hotfoot it to the nearest lane on the other.

As the car crawled over the mud and stones, they turned off the headlights to stay discreet. Tyler opened the window and leaned out, shining a torch to show Natasha the way ahead. Cold air rushed in, smelling of salt and rotting fish, making them shiver. An uneasy murk enveloped the car, which bucked and swayed on hidden swells and riptides in the mud, like they were being washed downstream. It was hard to tell land from sky, the visible world reduced to an amorphous interplay of densities, shifting and warping as they advanced.

They’d chosen a cloudy night for the theft, but occasionally the moon broke through, shimmering light on flooded ditches and drainage channels, boggy indents and trackways, the imprint of a community long lost. Natasha remembered a geography lesson at school about Nazca lines in Peru.

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